There is not a form of left-anarchism or revolutionary socialism which
states as its aim the strengthening of the state. This is a consistent
fallacy propogated against socialism, the aim of which, ultimately, is
the “withering away of the state”. The state is necessary, in the final
analysis, to maintain the status quo where there is inequality and class
division. So capitalism, despite everything the right-wing claim to
say about “big government” desperately needs the state and its various
institutions for its very survival. We see this in times of economic
crises, when private banks and corporations look to the state to save
them. We also see it most obviously through how the state maintains an
army and police whose force is used in the interests of expanding /
defending profit making markets and private property respectively. The
aim of many socialists (and not all socialists and anarchists agree with
each other on this) is to take control the state in order to use its
institutions to implement socialist law and as a necessary to
dismantling the state altogether. For a clear exposition on how
reformist socialists, revolutionary socialists and anarchists define the
state and its purpose etc., a good starting point is Lenin’s ‘State and
Revolution’ which was written during the Russian Revolution in 1917.
It’s freely available here: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/
A classic novel turned upside-down and inside-out: Normal People is just another cliché of classic romantic novels, of which Pride and Prejudice is probably the most obvious; a genre which has been repeated and imitated to death, and NP is another installment - well, readers of certain synopses might mistakenly think so. The first page produces an immediate sense that "this is different"; the tension in a situation we have just entered (but that is familiar to us all), the eroticism, the anxiety (paradoxically, after they have received such good exam results - but the dreaded Leaving Cert is coming up), Connell's awkwardness; in short, it feels real. If one was to compare it to P&P for its similar plot - and various sources have (8, 18) - one could also compare the realism of the characters of both novels; the accuracy and simplicity of the description and dialogue. NP , like other great works of art, is a con...
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